Bernard Ollivier pushes onward in his attempt to become the first person to walk the entire length of the Great Silk Road. “A gripping account. More than just a travel story—this is a quest for the Other.”—Alexis Liebaert, L’Événement Picking up where Walking to Samarkand left off, Winds of the Steppe continues the astonishing tale of journalist Bernard Ollivier’s 7,200-mile walk from Turkey to China along the Silk Road, the longest and most mythical trade route of all time. Taking readers from the snows of the Pamir Mountains to the backstreets of Kashgar—a Central Asian city that could be the setting for One Thousand and One Nights—to the Tian Shan Mountains to the endless Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Bernard Ollivier continues his epic foot journey along the Great Silk Road hoping to make his way to Han China and reach, at long last, the legendary city of Xi’an. After traveling through a region dotted with former Buddhist shrines, Ollivier finds himself craving the warm welcome of Islamic lands, where, regardless of their culture or nationality, travelers are often treated as esteemed guests. Beyond the occasional vestige of the old Silk Road, Ollivier comes face to face with sites of religious significance, China’s Great Wall, and of course thousands of everyday people along the way. As Ollivier tries to make sense of his journey and find connections between these people’s daily lives and the so-called “modern” world, he does so with a sense of humility that transforms his personal journey into a universal quest.

.While the early history of the steppe nomad is shrouded in obscurity, The Empire of the Steppes brings both the general reader and the specialist the majestic sweep, grandeur and the overriding intellectual grasp of Grousset's original. Hailed as a masterpiece when first published in French in 1939, and in English in 1970, this great work of synthesis brings before us the people of the steppes, dominated by three mighty figures--Atilla, Genghiz Khan, and Tamberlain--as they marched through ten centuries of history, from the borders of China to the frontiers of the West. The book includes nineteen maps, a comprehensive index, notes, and bibliography. The late Rene Grousset was director of the Cernuschi Museum and curator of the Muse Guimet in Paris, a member of the French Academy and author of many works on Asia Minor and the Near East.

Introduction by A. N. Wilson • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle—all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: “To read him . . . is to find one’ s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.”

This book presents 45 papers presented at a major international conference held at the British Museum during the 2017 BP exhibition 'Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia'. Papers include new archaeological discoveries, results of scientific research and studies of museum collections, most presented in English for the first time.

No matter how one defines its extent and borders, Eastern Europe has long been understood as a liminal space, one whose undeniable cultural and historical continuities with Western Europe have been belied by its status as an “Other” in the Western imagination. Across illuminating and provocative case studies, The World beyond the West focuses on the region’s ambiguous relationship to historical processes of colonialism and Orientalism. In exploring encounters with distant lands through politics, travel, migration, and exchange, it places Eastern Europe at the heart of its analysis while decentering the most familiar narratives and recasting the history of the region.

A master of driving pace, exotic setting, and complex plotting, Harold Lamb was one of Robert E. Howard's favorite writers. Here at last is every pulse-pounding, action-packed story of Lamb's greatest hero, Khlit the Cossack, the "wolf of the steppes." Journey with the unsung grandfather of sword and sorcery in search of ancient tombs, gleaming treasure, and thrilling landscapes. Match wits with deadly swordsmen, scheming priests, and evil cults. Rescue lovely damsels, ride with bold comrades, and hazard everything on your brains, skill, and a little luck. This four-volume set collects for the first time the complete Cossack stories of Harold Lamb: every adventure of Khlit the Cossack and those of his friends, allies, and fellow Cossacks, many of which have never appeared between book covers. Compiled and edited by the Harold Lamb scholar Howard Andrew Jones, each volume features essays Lamb wrote about his stories, an informative introduction by a popular author, and a wealth of rare, exciting, swashbuckling fiction. In this third volume, the wily old Cossack Khlit may have aged but he's lost none of his guile. He shepherds his dashing grandson Kirdy into one adventure after another, finally uniting with his allies Ayub and Demid in the climactic story White Falcon--out of print since the 1920s. Here too are the exploits of Ayub and Demid, risking all to safeguard the perilous Russian border from marauding Turks, Tatars, and even bloodthirsty Russian nobles.